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Media trust hits new low

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Re: Media trust hits new low

#111

Post by michaelmrose »

zepto wrote: post #97
foerbert wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect they are just referring to the basic social fabric, so to speak. If everybody has a variety of mostly trustworthy sources that act as implicit or explicit verifiers of each other, then everybody has a fairly robust ability to gather information about the world - including the trustworthiness of the various parts of their 'net'. This sort of thing seems to have, however, somewhat broken down in recently year…

> If the aforementioned trusted CEOs faithfully and accurately are able to point out media they believe is trustworthy and keep an eye on those outlets, it could potentially work as a way to kick start the rejuvenation of these networks. But the media aren’t trustworthy. That’s how we got to this place. If that gets fixed, then indeed CEOs can celebrate it, but the problem is with the media right now, not the lack of…

The media have never been completely without issue. Even people trying to be objective have pre-existing biases and holes in their knowledge. Importantly journalists are professional writers and information gatherers whereas accurate understanding may require expertise in many and varied fields where the journalist is a sometimes inaccurate translator for actual experts who themselves may be wrong or biased.

Americas understanding of the world could be said to be diverging because of self selection of content in people's respective echo chambers but I don't think it apt to say it's because the media is less trustworthy just because they are less trusted.

Can you provide objective criteria to suggest that the accuracy of the news has declined?

Re: Media trust hits new low

#112

Post by lifeisstillgood »

ouid wrote: post #92

Ban advertising, which is paid lying, and then the trust problems that result from everyone being paid to lie and exclusively being paid to lie will go away.

That's quite an interesting idea.

I wonder what a social media landscape would look like if we managed to implement UBI. Effectively we would have any number of financially independent news sources and aggregators.

This is of course the same thing as "subsidies" but without professional ethics etc.

It's going to be interesting looking for a new news model for the coming decades.

Re: Media trust hits new low

#113

Post by bitexploder »

busterarm wrote: post #65
zepto wrote: post #10

> How it works: Media outlets can continue to report reliable facts, but that won't turn the trend around on its own. What's needed is for trusted institutions to visibly embrace the news media. This is an extremely weird and disturbing conclusion. Orwellian even. What’s needed is for news organizations to not only report facts, but stop telling stories in ways that only benefit their own ideological systems. That’s…

Journalism is pay to play anyway. If you aren't a mainstream politician, you literally have to buy ads to get coverage. Outside of politics it works this way as well. Heck, just look at games journalism. News channels also hate absolutely anything that takes attention away from their content and their advertisers. Thus video games, dungeons & dragons, religion or anything else that holds the attention of masses of pe…

Journalism and journalists serve an important role in any free society. They are one of the last great checks on a government. We still need reliable journalism. But we need it to not be constant hyperbole and drama.

Re: Media trust hits new low

#114

Post by w-ll »

hoffs wrote: post #102
msravi wrote: post #52

> Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan writes that "our goal should go beyond merely putting truthful information in front of the public. We should also do our best to make sure it’s widely accepted." This attitude here, is a source of the problem by itself. If traditional media outlets would just put truthful information out without trying to get it "accepted," that would go a long way in rebuilding tru…

No it wouldn't lol, majority of people when given the facts simply refuse them. You have facts about vaccines working yet how many are still refusing them?

Could that might be caused by one major network gaslighting their viewers for the last 4 years?

Re: Media trust hits new low

#115

Post by beej71 »

citrus1330 wrote: post #16

So their solution to the declining trust in government and media is to leverage the trust that employees still have in their CEOs. If they can convince CEOs to push their false narratives, then trust will evaporate there as well. How about instead: be more trustworthy.

"Be more trustworthy" isn't a particularly simple notion. What could CNN or Fox do to do that?

Re: Media trust hits new low

#116

Post by vxNsr »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #45
hhs wrote: post #26

Pew research breaks it down sharply from 2016 to 2021 by social media, local news, and national news: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/30/partisan-di...

The last 5 years is a very short time horizon, I'd love to see a longer one.

Until 2016 it seems it was assumed and the question wasn’t asked. It was only when the term “fake news” was coined that anyone thought to gauge people’s trust in media.

Re: Media trust hits new low

#117

Post by SnowProblem »

For a long time my model of the world assumed a certain level of corruption to exist in the West, but I assumed it was generally local, and that any large-scale corruption would become a national scandal, like the Church Committee, or Watergate. Basically I had expected an equal balance of justice to match the crime. I no longer hold that. There is deep corruption everywhere - through the media, to government, academia, tech, and finance, and seemingly nobody to hold institutions and individuals accountable. Were we expected to just forget Jeffrey Epstein, for example, and all the relationships and lack of investigation? It seems so. You either close your eyes to it, or you're forced down some dark rabbit holes just to form a cohesive worldview. The few beacons of light today are now all brave individuals - podcasters, twitter accounts, leakers, writers - and their very existence feels fragile. So this article strikes me as extremely shallow. We're not operating in business-as-usual, where just a few tweaks and the metrics will look good again.

Re: Media trust hits new low

#118

Post by tootahe45 »

oroul wrote: post #35

> Reversing the decline is a monster task — and one that some journalists and news organizations have taken upon themselves. They're going to need help — perhaps from America's CEOs. Is this a bad joke? Distrust of media is largely brought about because it is (mostly) in the private sector and therefore always puts the sustainability of its business model above objective reporting. We've known for a while now that ne…

> sustainability of its business model above objective reporting

Wouldn't publicly-funded media be the same? if a conservative govt wanted to cut the media budget would we not see one-sided negative reporting targeting conservatives?

Re: Media trust hits new low

#119

Post by peterburkimsher »

nostromo wrote: post #99
jakelazaroff wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What’s needed is for news organizations to not only report facts, but stop telling stories in ways that only benefit their own ideological systems. This is not a new phenomenon; it’s been happening for a looooong time. Look at the difference in how white and Black newspapers reported on the Tulsa race massacre [1]: ”More Than Two Hundred White and Colored Men, Women and Children Were Killed in the Bloody or Horribl…

> white and Black It was when the New York Times decided to start capitalizing black but not white I knew they were done being objective and had turned to activism. Their explanation that all black people worldwide share a common culture but all white people do not is just absurd. They’re not a serious news organization and haven’t been for some time.

As the Bee Gees say regarding the New York Times:

We can try to understand

The New York Times' effect on man

Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother

You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive

Re: Media trust hits new low

#120

Post by busterarm »

bitexploder wrote: post #113
busterarm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalism is pay to play anyway. If you aren't a mainstream politician, you literally have to buy ads to get coverage. Outside of politics it works this way as well. Heck, just look at games journalism. News channels also hate absolutely anything that takes attention away from their content and their advertisers. Thus video games, dungeons & dragons, religion or anything else that holds the attention of masses of pe…

Journalism and journalists serve an important role in any free society. They are one of the last great checks on a government. We still need reliable journalism. But we need it to not be constant hyperbole and drama.

I am saying stop watching until the journalism improves. Stop watching until it serves your interests.

If you keep supporting what it brings you now, how do you expect it to change?

Journalism and journalists are not doing their part. Under the status quo it should crash and burn and die.

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